Thursday, October 19, 2006

Apathy and cyclists - Lorry 1 Cyclist DOA

Considering yesterday's fatal and tragic accident outside UL where a lorry driver collided with a cyclist which resulted in the woman's death. The lorry was driving into the new construction site beside the Castletroy Park Hotel which means it must have come up the hill to turn left as there is no construction traffic allowed to turn right on Plassey Park Road. The shocking thing about this accident is that if this was the situation, the lorry driver must have passed along beside and then passed out the cyclist before turning to the left into the constuction site. This means that either the driver wasn't paying attention to the road or just simply ignored the fact that he cut across the cycle lane which exists along the length of that section of road. The charge's for this case should probably be manslaugher but given the wishy washy system for traffic prosecutions in Ireland, I'm afraid that its likely to be only dangerous driving or worse yet only a charge of driving without due care and attention.

4 Comments:

You're probably right but in this case, I'd happily stand in contempt of the entire system. Reading the front page of the Limerick Leader (city edition) tonight, I'm even more convinced that we have the wrong attitude towards this type of accident even in the media.

Having read the paper, those were the facts at least as reported by the Limerick Leader. I wouldn't worry too much about the jurers argument as I don't think quite that many people read this blog and on the more serious side, sometimes you just have to state these things out in the open. Reading what I've read I can't see it being any different to many of the newspapers and their coverage of tragic events (OP-ED pieces).